Editorial: Halloween Treats For Legislators

DepthofField / Getty Images/iStockphoto

The capitol building in Hartford, Connecticut at dusk.

The capitol building in Hartford, Connecticut at dusk.

(DepthofField / Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Legislators put a few treats for themselves in the state budget that passed shortly before Halloween. One of those goodies gets election investigators off their tails after a year. The other gives them a shortcut to collecting state money for their re-election campaigns.

What do these goodies have to do with the 800-page state budget that they were slipped into? Nothing. But they do make legislators' lives easier. It's sneaky little goodies like these that make the public distrust lawmakers.

Goody No. 1 makes quick work of complaints that citizens file with the State Elections Enforcement Commission. If complaints aren't resolved in a year, they are dismissed — no matter how busy the stressed SEEC is, especially in years following statewide elections (such as next year's election).

Legislators say they want the SEEC to act faster on minor and nuisance complaints against them. "I don't think it's fair to have a complaint lodging against them for a year without a resolution," said Senate Republican leader Len Fasano.

But the elections agency wasn't given any money to meet this new demand, even though the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis said it would need more staff to carry it out — at a cost of $400,000 annually. In fact, the SEEC is still struggling from earlier cuts. Hmm, could that be why cases aren't closed faster?

Also, it's not always easy to know at a glance which complaint is minor and which is a mere nuisance.

Take the complaint from Stamford's registrars of voters in late 2015 that involved a few absentee ballots. It's now become a criminal investigation into ballot tampering. It took the SEEC more than a year to investigate that one.

For these reasons and many more, this bad idea was trounced by good-government groups during the regular legislative session. No one testified in support of it, and it never came to a vote in the Senate, the CT Mirror's Mark Pazniokas reported last week.

Yet it was tucked into the humungous budget bill that was rushed through passage on Oct. 26.

Because of this "rat," as such underhanded provisions are called, politicians can now delay — and thus kill — campaign investigations if their lawyers are any good at obstruction techniques.

Investigating Takes Time

The commission does, in fact, resolve a lot of cases in a year — 72 percent last year, it says. But not all complaints are simple matters that can be wrapped up quickly, as legislators well know. Some grab a lot of SEEC's dwindling resources, which forces others to wait their turn.

One example is the 2014 complaint that the state Democratic Party was spending money illegally to get Gov. Dannel P. Malloy re-elected. That case took more than a year to be resolved, with a record $325,000 settlement eventually paid by the Democratic State Central Committee.

Plenty of Republicans have also been zinged by the State Elections Enforcement Commission over the years. So there is bipartisan eagerness to hamstring the pesky watchdog commission and dispatch with the annoying accusations of election wrongdoing.

"Massive Advantage" For Incumbents

As if clearing out election complaints wasn't enough of a break for legislators, they also gave themselves a shortcut to funding their re-election campaigns.

Before, candidates had to collect enough $100 donations, up to a certain amount, to qualify for public funding. Now they can collect $250 donations. That means they can get to the goal — public financing — much quicker.

This benefits incumbents because of their "massive advantage" in raising money, as Courant columnist Colin McEnroe points out on these pages.

So legislators have made it easier to get election money, yet harder to enforce election violations. This is an unwise move for a state nicknamed "Corrupticut."